11 ms·

Uber, Lyft drivers strike in Los Angeles

73 points by okareaman 5y ago

okareaman 5y ago
As a retired person, I used to enjoy driving for Lyft and Uber. I took a break during the worst of the pandemic. My car is no longer functional, so I expected to start driving again with a rental car, which a lot of people were doing before the pandemic. Lyft and Uber ignored me for a year despite my high rating, while they had driver shortages. Finally, Lyft reached out and qualified me to drive with a rental car. However, the suggested rental car options were all at normal rates, which means I'd have to drive 25 hours a week to pay for the rental car and more to pay for insurance. Totally not worth risking my life for. Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies ("brain dead" as Steve Jobs would say)
- gruez 5y ago
  >Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies short them and/or buy puts. it's risky though. the market can remain irrational longer than you can involve solvent, and as the recent meme stocks have shown, the market can be very irrational.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Shorting even an obvious piece of shit like Lyft is risky in this environment. We're talking about a company that has never earned a profit, has no prospects of ever making a profit, has a huge and rapidly accelerating annual loss on shrinking revenues, the share price of which has doubled in the past year (up 5% today alone). You're going head-to-head with all the lunatics in the world.
    - dhbanes 5y ago
      That would be called betting against the fed. Excess liquidity trumps subpar fundamentals.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      Nikola Motors is another obvious PoS that has had significant retracements up and down in share price for not any particularly sound fundamental reasons. I've been short it since the Hindenburg Research post came out and have made money, but it's been nail-biting at times. I think buying puts is too expensive given that you've got to get the timing just right (and your upside is capped) and shorting Uber/Lyft is too fraught with "as the COVID recovery story changes good and bad, transportation companies are going to whipsaw some". Bet with the macro trend, not against it.
  - okareaman 5y ago
    I am not a particularly financially savvy person, but I can learn. I found this thread about shorting Uber in 2019 that seems more compelling today: Is Uber the perfect short? https://old.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/br6hl1/is_uber_the_perfect_short/ https://old.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/br6hl1/is_uber_the_...
    - staticman2 5y ago
      Shorting stocks is always risky. Taking stock picking advise from anonymous people on the internet is a bad idea in general unless you don't care if you lose money.
    - pugets 5y ago
      Keep in mind, you’re retired. Shorts have infinite risk.
- wlesieutre 5y ago
  Rental car companies don't have enough cars for their normal customers, I doubt they're in a hurry to rent them out at a discount for rideshare drivers. It's not that Lyft is brain dead, they aren't a car manufacturer and they can't wave their hands and make more cars available. Even car manufacturers can't make enough cars available. https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/07/16/rental-car-shortage-prices/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/07/16/rental-car-...
- bsder 5y ago
  > so I expected to start driving again with a rental car That's on you, then, for not understanding current market conditions. The used car market right now is insane and rental agencies bounced off bankruptcies if they didn't actually go bankrupt. All this means that renting a car is going to be quite expensive. I'd be surprised if anyone can make a profit doing rideshare with one.
Ajay-p 5y ago
This only appears limited to Los Angeles. Uber and Lyft appear to be working as usual in other major cities.
- okareaman 5y ago
  Similar problems in the Bay Area where I am. San Francisco and Los Angeles are huge markets and leading indicators. Uber bet on the idea the self-driving taxis would be a thing and they didn't have to make many concessions to human drivers. Self-driving cars is not working out the way it looked a few years ago, so I am pessimistic about their business model.
  - cam0 5y ago
    Uber/Lyft was such an important factor in my daily equation during my 20s (2010's). I remember those black car rides for $8. Haven't opened the Uber/Lyft apps in about 2 years. I can imagine using it again for business travel when it's not linked to my personal credit card though.
KMnO4 5y ago
Is there anything really stopping drivers from not striking? Unlike a union strike, Uber/Lyft drivers are striking on their own terms. Presumably if everyone else is striking, rates will be really high and the drivers not striking will be making decent wage (ironically part of the reason to strike).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tehjoker 5y ago
  That's called scabbing.
  - graeme 5y ago
    Don’t scabs usually come from outside the company? Like if uber hired new drivers at high rates.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    It's not scabbing. The contractors "striking" aren't employees. And it's not a strike as defined by the law.
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      This kind of pedantry reminds me of people who want to call prisoners "detainees" and who want to call torture "enhanced interrogation".
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        Setting aside the implication you are trying to make that following employment law equals to agreeing with torture, it's not the same at all. There's a legal definition of a strike, union and employment vs contractor. Just like there's a legal definition for prisoners and torture. You can't get the rights associated with an unionized strike (anti scab laws) without the consequences of being unionized (dues for instance).
slownews45 5y ago
I drove for uber briefly. Wasn't impressed with their integrity (the promo I signed up on said get X if you drive for us, then it was after you do Y, then Y and Z). I drove purely for fun but that rubbed me the wrong way so I wrapped it up.
- okareaman 5y ago
  Uber is mostly on the up and up. Lyft is the sketchier of the two. They use tricks on the drivers to direct them where they want them, such as luring a driver into a high demand area with a fake ride (which gets cancelled) and then suggesting, since you are here, why don't you wait for a ride.
  - rocgf 5y ago
    Do you have any source for this? This sounds so incredibly dodgy that I can't really believe it.
    - okareaman 5y ago
      Just personal experience. I have other examples, like creating fake hot zones to lure drivers away from crowded areas and cancelling my ride when the rider didn't show up right before the time when I would have been paid for waiting. Uber did none of these things. I still like Lyft though because they have a lot of government contracts and I like helping poor and sick people to their doctor appointments. Edit: I don't blame the people at Lyft. I blame their AI, which is designed by people, but can operate in ways they haven't anticipated.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    My problem with Uber is I had great records. The offer was get $XXX when you start driving with us. Period. I went through the process. No payment. So I followed up. Ohh they said, it's actually get $XXX when you do 5 rides or whatever. Fine, I did that. No payment. Then they said it's actually $XXX if ... at that point I was just like peace out. This was ages ago so they may have cleaned up their act, but I was not impressed.
908B64B197 5y ago
It's interesting how it's now fashionable to bash on Uber and Lyft. Seems everyone conveniently forgot about the medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted. Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it. And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).
- okareaman 5y ago
  I don't understand your logic. We can't talk about problems with new things that are an improvement over old things?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  > The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber (and Lyft) simply took over as the established rent seeker. At least with medallions, there were caps to prevent overcapacity in the system and your urban cores flooded with rideshare drivers. There is no such restriction with Uber and Lyft, so their revenue comes on the back of the externalities of underpaid drivers and unregulated congestion.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    Uber and Lyft hare both non-profitable organizations. Even if rides were matched by some zero cost magic oracle, drivers would be making almost the same amount of profit, because that number’s defined by the next best alternative. Really, what you find objectionable is not the presence of Uber or Lyft, but the fact that people are running independent businesses, competing with each other.
spiritplumber 5y ago
I wonder if it's possible to write an Uber-like app for union membership.
- spiritplumber 5y ago
  People make an account, and when there are enough people in that area and in that industry to make it feasible to do a union vote, you get a notification and can organize a vote quickly so that there's less time for anti-union propaganda to go out.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Yet people always assume that a tech union will look exactly like the AFL-CIO of yesteryear, without any new ideas.
bogota 5y ago
Sounds like this just incentives the drivers who don’t care to hop on and make more money then they normally would.
betwixthewires 5y ago
So now we find ourselves back at the beginning. I remember a rick and Morty where they save the purge planet and at the end the people make it a purge planet again. This sounds like that. The problem uber and lyft set out to solve was not solved. Maybe it was corporate greed, government regulations, bad marketing, whatever, in the end it seems the rideshare industry will end up with unions and medallions. Whatever the case, they were on to it until it became this whole big thing. So how do you solve this problem? That's easy. Let people with cars give rides for money if that's what they want and find a way for them to network to make that efficient. A FOSS uber like network would solve it. The drivers that wouldn't be happy wouldn't be able to strike, they'd just quit. The drivers that liked it would keep doing it. Everyone would be happy and nobody would rent seek, government or corporation or cartel or guild or union or anybody, the supply and demand for ride sharing and pricing would solve itself naturally. But how do you market that when everyone finds the services they use from YouTube ads? Hmm I wonder.
ThatPlayer 5y ago
Another alternative in some areas of Los Angeles not mentioned in the article is Metro Micro that seems to be newer: https://micro.metro.net/ https://micro.metro.net/ Though I've been taking Metro buses as they aren't currently charging for that.

73 points by okareaman 5y ago

As a retired person, I used to enjoy driving for Lyft and Uber. I took a break during the worst of the pandemic. My car is no longer functional, so I expected to start driving again with a rental car, which a lot of people were doing before the pandemic. Lyft and Uber ignored me for a year despite my high rating, while they had driver shortages. Finally, Lyft reached out and qualified me to drive with a rental car. However, the suggested rental car options were all at normal rates, which means I'd have to drive 25 hours a week to pay for the rental car and more to pay for insurance. Totally not worth risking my life for. Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies ("brain dead" as Steve Jobs would say)

gruez 5y ago
>Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies short them and/or buy puts. it's risky though. the market can remain irrational longer than you can involve solvent, and as the recent meme stocks have shown, the market can be very irrational.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Shorting even an obvious piece of shit like Lyft is risky in this environment. We're talking about a company that has never earned a profit, has no prospects of ever making a profit, has a huge and rapidly accelerating annual loss on shrinking revenues, the share price of which has doubled in the past year (up 5% today alone). You're going head-to-head with all the lunatics in the world.
  - dhbanes 5y ago
    That would be called betting against the fed. Excess liquidity trumps subpar fundamentals.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Nikola Motors is another obvious PoS that has had significant retracements up and down in share price for not any particularly sound fundamental reasons. I've been short it since the Hindenburg Research post came out and have made money, but it's been nail-biting at times. I think buying puts is too expensive given that you've got to get the timing just right (and your upside is capped) and shorting Uber/Lyft is too fraught with "as the COVID recovery story changes good and bad, transportation companies are going to whipsaw some". Bet with the macro trend, not against it.
- okareaman 5y ago
  I am not a particularly financially savvy person, but I can learn. I found this thread about shorting Uber in 2019 that seems more compelling today: Is Uber the perfect short? https://old.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/br6hl1/is_uber_the_perfect_short/ https://old.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/br6hl1/is_uber_the_...
  - staticman2 5y ago
    Shorting stocks is always risky. Taking stock picking advise from anonymous people on the internet is a bad idea in general unless you don't care if you lose money.
  - pugets 5y ago
    Keep in mind, you’re retired. Shorts have infinite risk.
wlesieutre 5y ago
Rental car companies don't have enough cars for their normal customers, I doubt they're in a hurry to rent them out at a discount for rideshare drivers. It's not that Lyft is brain dead, they aren't a car manufacturer and they can't wave their hands and make more cars available. Even car manufacturers can't make enough cars available. https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/07/16/rental-car-shortage-prices/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/07/16/rental-car-...
bsder 5y ago
> so I expected to start driving again with a rental car That's on you, then, for not understanding current market conditions. The used car market right now is insane and rental agencies bounced off bankruptcies if they didn't actually go bankrupt. All this means that renting a car is going to be quite expensive. I'd be surprised if anyone can make a profit doing rideshare with one.

Ajay-p 5y ago

This only appears limited to Los Angeles. Uber and Lyft appear to be working as usual in other major cities.

okareaman 5y ago
Similar problems in the Bay Area where I am. San Francisco and Los Angeles are huge markets and leading indicators. Uber bet on the idea the self-driving taxis would be a thing and they didn't have to make many concessions to human drivers. Self-driving cars is not working out the way it looked a few years ago, so I am pessimistic about their business model.
- cam0 5y ago
  Uber/Lyft was such an important factor in my daily equation during my 20s (2010's). I remember those black car rides for $8. Haven't opened the Uber/Lyft apps in about 2 years. I can imagine using it again for business travel when it's not linked to my personal credit card though.

KMnO4 5y ago

Is there anything really stopping drivers from not striking? Unlike a union strike, Uber/Lyft drivers are striking on their own terms. Presumably if everyone else is striking, rates will be really high and the drivers not striking will be making decent wage (ironically part of the reason to strike).

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tehjoker 5y ago
That's called scabbing.
- graeme 5y ago
  Don’t scabs usually come from outside the company? Like if uber hired new drivers at high rates.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  It's not scabbing. The contractors "striking" aren't employees. And it's not a strike as defined by the law.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    This kind of pedantry reminds me of people who want to call prisoners "detainees" and who want to call torture "enhanced interrogation".
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      Setting aside the implication you are trying to make that following employment law equals to agreeing with torture, it's not the same at all. There's a legal definition of a strike, union and employment vs contractor. Just like there's a legal definition for prisoners and torture. You can't get the rights associated with an unionized strike (anti scab laws) without the consequences of being unionized (dues for instance).

slownews45 5y ago

I drove for uber briefly. Wasn't impressed with their integrity (the promo I signed up on said get X if you drive for us, then it was after you do Y, then Y and Z). I drove purely for fun but that rubbed me the wrong way so I wrapped it up.

okareaman 5y ago
Uber is mostly on the up and up. Lyft is the sketchier of the two. They use tricks on the drivers to direct them where they want them, such as luring a driver into a high demand area with a fake ride (which gets cancelled) and then suggesting, since you are here, why don't you wait for a ride.
- rocgf 5y ago
  Do you have any source for this? This sounds so incredibly dodgy that I can't really believe it.
  - okareaman 5y ago
    Just personal experience. I have other examples, like creating fake hot zones to lure drivers away from crowded areas and cancelling my ride when the rider didn't show up right before the time when I would have been paid for waiting. Uber did none of these things. I still like Lyft though because they have a lot of government contracts and I like helping poor and sick people to their doctor appointments. Edit: I don't blame the people at Lyft. I blame their AI, which is designed by people, but can operate in ways they haven't anticipated.
- slownews45 5y ago
  My problem with Uber is I had great records. The offer was get $XXX when you start driving with us. Period. I went through the process. No payment. So I followed up. Ohh they said, it's actually get $XXX when you do 5 rides or whatever. Fine, I did that. No payment. Then they said it's actually $XXX if ... at that point I was just like peace out. This was ages ago so they may have cleaned up their act, but I was not impressed.

908B64B197 5y ago

It's interesting how it's now fashionable to bash on Uber and Lyft. Seems everyone conveniently forgot about the medallion system Uber and Lyft disrupted. Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it. And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).

okareaman 5y ago
I don't understand your logic. We can't talk about problems with new things that are an improvement over old things?
toomuchtodo 5y ago
> The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber (and Lyft) simply took over as the established rent seeker. At least with medallions, there were caps to prevent overcapacity in the system and your urban cores flooded with rideshare drivers. There is no such restriction with Uber and Lyft, so their revenue comes on the back of the externalities of underpaid drivers and unregulated congestion.
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  Uber and Lyft hare both non-profitable organizations. Even if rides were matched by some zero cost magic oracle, drivers would be making almost the same amount of profit, because that number’s defined by the next best alternative. Really, what you find objectionable is not the presence of Uber or Lyft, but the fact that people are running independent businesses, competing with each other.

spiritplumber 5y ago

I wonder if it's possible to write an Uber-like app for union membership.

spiritplumber 5y ago
People make an account, and when there are enough people in that area and in that industry to make it feasible to do a union vote, you get a notification and can organize a vote quickly so that there's less time for anti-union propaganda to go out.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Yet people always assume that a tech union will look exactly like the AFL-CIO of yesteryear, without any new ideas.

bogota 5y ago

Sounds like this just incentives the drivers who don’t care to hop on and make more money then they normally would.

betwixthewires 5y ago

So now we find ourselves back at the beginning. I remember a rick and Morty where they save the purge planet and at the end the people make it a purge planet again. This sounds like that. The problem uber and lyft set out to solve was not solved. Maybe it was corporate greed, government regulations, bad marketing, whatever, in the end it seems the rideshare industry will end up with unions and medallions. Whatever the case, they were on to it until it became this whole big thing. So how do you solve this problem? That's easy. Let people with cars give rides for money if that's what they want and find a way for them to network to make that efficient. A FOSS uber like network would solve it. The drivers that wouldn't be happy wouldn't be able to strike, they'd just quit. The drivers that liked it would keep doing it. Everyone would be happy and nobody would rent seek, government or corporation or cartel or guild or union or anybody, the supply and demand for ride sharing and pricing would solve itself naturally. But how do you market that when everyone finds the services they use from YouTube ads? Hmm I wonder.

ThatPlayer 5y ago

Another alternative in some areas of Los Angeles not mentioned in the article is Metro Micro that seems to be newer: https://micro.metro.net/ https://micro.metro.net/ Though I've been taking Metro buses as they aren't currently charging for that.